How does scoring work in curling?

Only one team scores in an end. When all sixteen stones have been thrown, the team with the stone closest to the button scores one point for every one of its stones that is closer to the button than the opponent's best stone. Stones outside the house never count.

What is the hammer in curling?

The hammer is the last stone of an end, and it is a large advantage because you get the final say on the position. The team that did not score in the previous end takes the hammer in the next one, which is why scoring a single point with the hammer is often treated as a poor result.

How long is a curling sheet?

A sheet is 150 feet long and 14 feet 2 inches wide, with a house at each end. The two hog lines are 72 feet apart, and a stone must be released before the near one and must fully cross the far one to stay in play.

Does sweeping really do anything?

Yes, but far less than it looks. Full-effort sweeping reduces friction under the stone by about 6.6%, which is worth a few extra feet of draw, and sweeping one side of the path can steer the stone about 71 millimetres over a full slide. It cannot rescue a badly missed weight.

CurlTi.me/Learn/How curling works

How curling works

Two teams slide granite stones down a sheet of ice at a target. The team with the stone nearest the middle scores. Everything else — the sweeping, the hammer, the guards — is detail hanging off those two sentences.

Last updated 2026-08-16

The whole game in one paragraph#

Two teams take turns sliding 19-kilogram granite stones down a strip of ice toward a set of concentric rings called the house. Sixteen stones are thrown, eight each, alternating. When they have all stopped, you look at the house and ask one question: whose stone is closest to the middle? That team scores, and it scores one point for each of its stones that is closer to the centre than the other team's best stone. Then everybody walks to the other end and does it again in the other direction. That unit is called an end, and a game is eight or ten of them.

The one rule that explains the rest

Only one team scores in an end, and the team that scores throws first in the next one — which means giving up the last stone. Almost every curling decision that looks strange from outside is somebody trading points against who throws last.

The sheet#

A curling sheet is 150 feet long and 14 feet 2 inches wide. That shape is the first thing to take in, because it is nothing like the square you might imagine: it is a corridor, and the whole game happens along one narrow line.

A sheet, drawn to scale. There is a house at each end; you throw from beside one and play into the other.

The end you are throwing at looks like this. Everything has a name, and the names are used constantly, so they are worth ten seconds now:

The playing end. The rings are 12, 8 and 4 feet across; the dot at the centre is the button. The fifteen feet between the hog line and the front of the house is where guards live.

The house — the rings. Twelve feet across at the outside, then eight, then four, then a one-foot circle at the dead centre called the button.
The tee line — the line through the middle of the house.
The back line — six feet behind it, at the back edge of the house. A stone entirely past it is out of play and is removed.
The hog line — fifteen feet in front of the house. A stone that does not fully cross it is removed, which is what stops anyone parking a stone halfway down as an obstacle.
The hack — the foothold you push out of, at the far end from the house you are playing into.

There is a full tour of the markings, with the names for every spot on the ice, on the sheet and what everything is called.

An end, stone by stone#

Four players a side, throwing two stones each, alternating with the other team. Sixteen stones in total. The order is fixed: the lead throws first, then the second, then the third, then the skip, who throws last and is in charge of what everybody else throws. Each player throws one stone, then the other team throws, then the same player throws again.

While one player throws, two sweep in front of the stone and the skip stands in the house holding a broom on the spot they want it to finish. The skip's broom is the target; the thrower aims at it, and the ice does the rest.

When all sixteen have been thrown and stopped, the end is scored, and the ends simply repeat until the game is over.

How scoring works#

Count only the stones in the house — anything not touching the rings scores nothing, however close it looks. Find the team whose stone is nearest the button. That team scores, and the number of points is the number of its stones that are nearer to the button than the best stone the other team has.

So the losing team of an end always scores zero, and a lot of ends finish 1–0. Scoring three or four in one end is a big result; five is rare enough that people remember it.

Measuring

Distance is measured from the centre of the button to the nearest edge of the stone. When two are too close to call, an official brings out a measuring stick that pivots on the pin at the centre. A stone only has to be touching the outermost ring to count — a stone in that position is called a biter.

The hammer#

Throwing the last stone of an end is called having the hammer, and it is a real advantage: you see the whole position before you commit, and you get the final word on it. Which is why the rules take it away from whoever used it well.

Score in an end, and you lose the hammer for the next one.
Fail to score, and you take it.
A blank end — nobody scores at all — leaves the hammer where it was.

That is the engine of curling strategy. Scoring one point with the hammer is a slightly bad end, because you have spent the advantage to gain a single point and handed the advantage over. Teams with the hammer would often rather blank the end — clear everything out and score nothing — and keep the hammer for a later end where they can score two or more. There is a whole page on this at strategy: playing with and without the hammer.

Who gets the hammer first is decided before the game — by a coin toss, or by a draw-to-the-button shootout in serious competition. On CurlTi.me it is a coin toss, and the winner also chooses the stone colour.

The free guard zone#

A stone sitting in front of the house, between the hog line and the tee line and not touching the rings, is a guard. It protects whatever is behind it.

Without a rule, the strongest opening move would be to knock every guard straight out, and games would collapse into a long exchange of takeouts with nothing left on the ice. So there is a rule: the first five stones of an end may not remove an opposing stone from the free guard zone. You may bump it, you may hit it, but if it leaves the playing area the stones are put back where they were and the shooter is removed. From the sixth stone onward the guard is fair game.

This is why an end opens with guards going up rather than coming off. It is usually called the five-rock rule; older games used a four-rock version, and casual games sometimes drop it entirely.

Throwing a stone#

You start crouched in the hack with the stone in front of you, push out, and slide. The stone is carried during the slide rather than pushed — you are moving with it at the speed it will leave at, and you simply let go. The release has to happen before the near hog line.

As you release, you turn the handle a little: a few degrees of rotation, two and a half to three and a half turns over the whole slide. That rotation is the whole reason the sport is called curling. A stone with a clockwise turn drifts to the right, an anticlockwise turn drifts left, and the drift is roughly three to six feet by the time it stops.

Not a parabola

The stone runs nearly straight while it is quick and lays down most of its curl at the end. Roughly 15% of the total sideways movement happens in the first half of the slide and about half of it in the last five metres. This is why a stone that looks like it is missing wide suddenly comes back — and why sweepers commit late.

How hard to throw is called weight, and curlers call it by number rather than by feel: a 7 stops on the button, a 10 stops on the back line, a 2 is a guard. See calling weight by number.

Sweeping#

Sweeping does two things and neither of them is dragging the stone. Brushing the ice ahead of the stone momentarily reduces the friction under it, so the stone travels further and curls less. That is the entire mechanism.

It is worth much less than it looks from the sidelines. Full-effort sweeping reduces friction by about 6.6%, which buys a few extra feet on a draw. Sweeping only one side of the stone's path steers it sideways by about 71 millimetres over a full slide — enough to matter on a close draw, nowhere near enough to rescue a bad throw. And it stops working almost entirely above walking pace, because a brush head is 20 centimetres wide and no one can stroke faster than about four times a second, so on a fast takeout the brush simply cannot cover the ice the stone is about to reach.

What sweeping actually does goes through the measurements.

A game#

Eight ends in club play, ten in championship play, which takes about two hours and two and a half hours respectively. Highest total wins. A tie is settled by extra ends until somebody scores.

Teams concede. Being four down with two ends left is generally accepted as beaten, and shaking hands early is normal and polite rather than a surrender. Games also open and close with handshakes all round, and the winning team traditionally buys the drinks afterwards — this part is not optional.

The numbers, in one place#

Thing	Value
Sheet length	150 ft (45.72 m)
Sheet width	14 ft 2 in (4.32 m)
Hog line to hog line	72 ft
House diameter	12 ft
Button diameter	12 in
Stone mass	19 kg (about 42 lb)
Stone diameter	11.2 in (0.284 m)
Stones per end	16
Ends in a game	8 or 10
Typical draw, hog to hog	13.3 s

Where to go next#

The sheet and what everything is called — including why anyone says "top 8" or "back 12".
The shots, and what each one is for — draws, takeouts, freezes, come-arounds.
Strategy — what to do with the hammer, and what to do without it.
Play a game — against the computer, or by sending somebody a link. No account, nothing to install.